A MERCHANT IVORY FILM Rating: PG Run Time: 118 minutes Distributed in Australia by Publicity contact: Coreen Haddad, Potential Films (03 9328 5000 – [email protected] ) Sydney Publicist: Linda Airey, L.A. Publicity (02 9819 6982 – [email protected] ) Press kit and stills available at www.potentialfilms.com.au AUSTRALIAN R AUSTRALIAN RELEASE DATE – OCTOBER 14 2010 SYNOPSIS Based on the novel by Peter Cameron, JAMES IVORY’S THE CITY OF YOUR FINAL DESTINATION stars Academy Award winner ANTHONY HOPKINS , three-time Academy Award nominee LAURA LINNEY and CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG . 28-year-old Kansas University doctoral student Omar Razaghi has been awarded a grant to write the biography of Latin American writer Jules Gund. When Gund’s estate unexpectedly denies Omar authorisation, Omar is urged by his girlfriend to travel to Uruguay and petition the executor to change their minds. The Gund “family,” living together on the author’s isolated and decaying estate, includes Gund’s widow, his mistress, her young daughter, Gund’s brother, and his partner. Omar’s unannounced arrival upsets their fragile co-existence and causes all to question their own circumstances, which in turn leads Omar himself to question to what degree, if any; he has been the author of his own existence up until now. ABOUT THE FILM The City of Your Final Destination will be director James Ivory’s 24 th collaboration with two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Based on the novel by Peter Cameron, the film stars Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins, three-time Academy Award nominee Laura Linney, Hiroyuki Sanada ( The Last Samurai , Merchant Ivory’s The White Countess ), Charlotte Gainsbourg ( The Science of Sleep , The Golden Door ), Alexandra Maria Lara ( Downfall ), Academy Award winner Norma Aleandro, and Omar Metwally ( Munich ). Filming the movie is six-time Goya-winning Spanish cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe ( Talk to Her , The Others , The Sea Inside , and Woody Allen’s Vicki Christina Barcelona ). The movie will also feature costume design and production design by longtime Merchant Ivory collaborators Carol Ramsey and Andrew Sanders, respectively; and a score by Academy Award winner Jorge Drexler. Based on the novel of the same name by Peter Cameron, the protagonist of The City of Your Final Destination is Omar Razaghi (Omar Metwally), an Iranian-born graduate student at the University of Colorado, whose financial aid for a fellowship is contingent on writing an authorized biography of the deceased Latin American author Jules Gund. Shortly into the first semester of the fellowship, Gund’s estate unexpectedly denies Omar authorization. Omar's aggressively supportive girlfriend Deirdre urges him to travel to Uruguay and petition the executor to change their minds. Omar follows this advice and is instantly received into a hornet’s nest of intrigues and idiosyncrasies. The Gund “family,” living together on the author’s isolated and decaying estate, includes Gund’s widow, Caroline (Laura Linney); his mistress, Arden (Charlotte Gainsbourg); Arden’s young daughter, Portia; Gund’s brother, Adam (Anthony Hopkins), and Adam’s partner, Pete (Hiroyuki Sanada). Omar’s unannounced arrival upsets their fragile co-existence and causes all to question their own circumstances, which in turn leads Omar himself to question to what degree, if any, he has been the author of his own existence up until now. The City of Your Final Destination is a finely-tuned comedy of modern manners from which emerges that rarest of things: a film romance that is actually romantic; it is, to quote The New York Times review of Cameron’s novel, a “pungent, airy, grave, and transporting commedia dell’arte [that] subtly, affectingly, erotically traces the beginning, the hesitations, the advances of a love affair.” How we fall in love, how we find a home, and how we come to know, or change, ourselves are all questions that The City of Your Final Destination deftly explores in this warm and engaging work. ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS JAMES IVORY (Director) James Ivory was born in Berkeley, California. After attending the University of Oregon, where he majored in Architecture and Fine Arts, he received his Master’s degree in Film from the University of Southern California. His first film, which he wrote, photographed and produced, was Venice: Theme and Variations , a half-hour documentary made as his thesis for his Master’s degree. The New York Times named Ivory’s evocation of the city in 1957 as one of the ten best non-theatrical films of the year. An easy rapport with India was evidenced in Ivory’s second film The Sword and the Flute , based entirely on Indian miniature paintings in American collections. Its success led to a grant by the Asia Society of New York to make The Delhi Way , a film about the Indian capital city. In 1961, Ivory teamed up with Ismail Merchant to form Merchant Ivory Productions. Their first theatrical feature was The Householder , based on an early novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who also wrote the screenplay. Since then, Ivory’s feature and television filmmaking career has taken him to Great Britain, France, Italy, back to India several times, to China, to South America and to the United States. The many theatrical films that Ivory has made for Merchant Ivory Productions include the classic Shakespeare Wallah; three Henry James productions, The Europeans , The Bostonians , and The Golden Bowl ; Heat and Dust, from a novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and A Room With A View , Maurice , and Howards End from novels by E. M. Forster. A Room With A View was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won for Jhabvala’s adaptation of Forster’s novel, Best Costume, and Best Production Design. A Room With A View was also voted Best Film of 1986 by the Critic’s Circle Film Section of Great Britain, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and the National Board of Review in the United States. The film also received the Donatello Prize for Best Foreign Language Picture and Best Director in Italy. Ivory’s next film, Maurice , received a Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival as well as Best Film Score for Richard Robbins and Best Actor Awards for co-stars James Wilby and Hugh Grant. After Maurice , James Ivory returned to the United States to film Slaves of New York , based on the best-seller by Tama Janowitz starring Bernadette Peters, and Mr. & Mrs. Bridge , starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, which Ruth Prawer Jhabvala adapted from the novels Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell. This film received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress (Joanne Woodward), and Best Screenplay award from the New York Film Critics Circle. Ivory’s next project was Howards End , based on the E.M. Forster novel. Howards End was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won for Best Actress (Emma Thompson), Best Screenplay Adaptation (Ruth Prawer Jhabvala), and Best Art Direction/Set Direction (Luciana Arrighi/Ian Whittaker). The film also won Best Picture at the BAFTA Awards, as well as awards for Best Picture, Best Actress (Emma Thompson) and Best Director (James Ivory) from the National Board of Review, and Best Actress from the New York film critics. The Remains of the Day followed Howards End . It reunited Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in the starring roles of the butler Stevens and his housekeeper Miss Kenton. This film, too, received eight Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Director and was chosen “Film of the Year” by the British Film Critics Society. Jefferson in Paris , starring Nick Nolte, Greta Scacchi, Thandie Newton, and Simon Callow, was Ivory’s next project and was released in 1995,. During that same year, the Directors Guild of America awarded the D.W. Griffith Lifetime Achievement award, its highest honor, to Ivory for his body of work. Surviving Picasso, starring Anthony Hopkins as Picasso, Natascha McElhone as Francoise Gilot and Julianne Moore as Dora Maar, followed Jefferson in Paris in 1996. His next film, A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries , starring Kris Kristofferson, Barbara Hershey and Leelee Sobieski was filmed in Paris and released in 1998. The Golden Bowl , starring Nick Nolte, Uma Thurman and Anjelica Huston, was released in 2001. The film reunited many of the artists and technicians of Ivory’s earlier films such as composer Richard Robbins, cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts and costume designer John Bright. Ivory’s long time collaborator, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, wrote the screenplay of The Golden Bowl . In 2001, James Ivory, Ismail Merchant and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala received the Fellowship of the British Academy of Film and Television, one of the highest awards in film. In 2003 Merchant Ivory Productions released Le Divorce , through Fox Searchlight from the best- selling novel by Diane Johnson. It was adapted for the screen by James Ivory and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and starred Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts, Glenn Close, Stockard Channing, Matthew Modine, Sam Waterston, Thierry Lhermitte, Stephen Fry, Bebe Neuwirth, and Leslie Caron. Ivory’s previous film (and his final collaboration with the late Ismail Merchant) was 2005’s The White Countess , based on an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro, and was shot in Shanghai, China and starring Ralph Fiennes and the late Natasha Richardson, as well as Vanessa Redgrave and Lynn Redgrave. PETER CAMERON (Novelist) Peter Cameron is the author of five novels and three collections of short stories. He has published fiction in The New Yorker , Rolling Stone and several volumes of the annual O. Henry collection of Best Short Stories. His first novel, Leap Year, was written as a serial novel for the New York City magazine 7 Days , appearing a chapter each week during the year of 1988.